Exiled leader returning to Iraq

BBC ^ | April 8, 2003

[Indy Pendance]

The leader of Iraq's main Shi'ite opposition group, Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, has said he is going to return home after living in exile in neighbouring Iran for more than two decades.

He is the head of the Iranian-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution of Iraq, which is believed to have about 15,000 fighters.

Since the beginning of the US-led war in Iraq, Washington has repeatedly warned both Ayatollah Hakim's group and their Iranian hosts not to intervene in the war in Iraq.

Ayatollah Hakim's spokesman insisted that Iraq was his motherland and he did not need permission to go home.

He said neither the Iranian government nor the United States was putting pressure on Mr Hakim to delay his departure.

The Iraqi Shi'ites are concerned that the United States might try to deny them a role in a post-Saddam Hussein Iraq because of their ties with Tehran.

Their suspicion grew even further last week with the sudden appearance of a London-based opposition Shi'ite cleric in the Iraqi holy city of Najaf - apparently with the help of the American forces.

A spokesman for the London arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), Hamid al-Bayati, has denied that Washington is promoting a so-called moderate pro-American current among Iraqi Shi'ites at the expense of his group.

But he told the BBC that any Shi'ite cleric who cooperates with foreign forces would be regarded as a traitor.

[Risa]

>>The leader of Iraq's main Shi'ite opposition group, Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, has said he is going to return home after living in exile in neighbouring Iran for more than two decades. <<

What a damn coward. I Hope he's assassinated.

risa

[Republican Wildcat]

But he told the BBC that any Shi'ite cleric who cooperates with foreign forces would be regarded as a traitor.

I think he's got it backwards, as he will soon find out.

[boknows]

If this is the character that was on Sixty Minutes last week, it would not be surprising to see him surface as a possible leader of New Iraq. I am not sure, however, he is the man that would fit our model for the job.

[John Valentine]

If you knew anything at all about Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, you would know that whatever else you might say about him, he is not a coward.

And your hope that Ayatollah Hakim be assassinated is unbecoming and ignorant to say the least, since there have already been innumerable attempts to do so by Hussein's secret police.

Unless you are allied with Hussein, perhaps you ought to reconsider your hasty words.

[Mo1]

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[Risa]

>>If you knew anything at all about Ayatollah Mohammad-Baqer Hakim, you would know that whatever else you might sa about him, he is not a coward. <<

I do know about Hakim. I stand by what I said.

risa